#the other webb

[bleedingcoffee42]

[idiopathicsmile]

so when i think of The Terror, i used to think of this Horrible Histories sketch for children about a blatantly ill-prepared, clearly doomed subzero British expedition.

but today while trying to find it again, i relearned that the sketch is actually set like 60 years later and is about a totally separate clearly doomed subzero British expedition. they were even aiming for opposite ends of the earth, like geographically i was about as wrong as it's possible to be.

very embarrassing. for me, and frankly, for the British empire.

[mariathechosen1]

Genuinely impressed by how they manage to do this every single time they interact:

Bonus:

[loreartisan]

haha i heard a 'sshhhhing' behind me, that better not be my trusted ones planning to backstab me

[yoohyeon]

‘’𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞

𝙸 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚙𝚞𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚜𝚘 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐

𝙺𝚒𝚜𝚜 𝚖𝚎, 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎, 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚕𝚞𝚌𝚔

𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚠’’

Desperate Measures - Marianas Trench (2012)

Do not repost!

[swamp-guy]

The worstieeeessss

[johnnyspells]

things I'm not normal about: spider webb in his luxury apartment the night before meeting pashkin, thinking about how he bested river cartwright. like ok???? just looking at your empty swanky apartment and thinking about river in his tiny east end flat? wowwwwww

[romancegifs]

"That sounds fuckin' awful. But I still win."

[yourneighborhoodbibliophile]

Mid-Year Reading Wrap-Up

[shirleydanders]

“Reunion”

CHARACTERS: River Cartwright x James ‘Spider’ Webb

SUMMARY: It’s been about a month of silent hospital visits before River hears that Spider’s awake. He goes to see him and their game, as ever, is on.

WORD COUNT: 1,664

WARNINGS: Angst, violent imagery, bad language, deep, deep sadness and weird dudes.

NOTES: This is kind of a fix-it fic because I refuse to accept Spider’s death as laid out in either the book or the show. Also, I tried to do a bit of a character study into why River is so pathetic and Spider is such a fucked up little freak, so I hope you enjoy that.

River knows how it feels. To be worth more vivisected than whole. Maybe he can sympathise. There’s something more compelling about his destruction than the half-life he’s slipping through.

So loneliness will always be preferable to the feeling of being sifted through for something more valuable. He watches as the light in everyone’s eyes dies on contact with him. He carries on talking even though no one’s listening. He was made a pawn, but the game’s over.

He knows he’ll let his guard down eventually. Sooner or later, he’ll offer himself to someone, to be broken down into those familiar disembodied bits. He can feel useful then, if only for a moment.

Pathetic, that’s what most people would call it. River has given up trying to justify himself. He doesn’t have the energy. He’s half a person; half the vital functions. His thoughts dissolve as soon as they arrive. Any emotion feels a hundred miles away. If he does catch up, it’s already petered out.

He thinks about his mother briefly. How she left him on his granddad’s doorstep at seven. Well, of course she did. She could see it, even then. He’s always been a ghost.

He thinks that’s why he doesn’t stay whole for long. Whatever he is isn’t worth being saved, not even an entire being in the first place. And haunting people is so painful. So he lets them take him apart. All the pieces. Until he’s just a husk, and they’ve slinked away.

Spider’s anxieties are different altogether. He is sure of his importance; knows he’s needed. But the idea that someone could overtake what he’s managed to achieve makes him sick. The constant need to sabotage, to prove himself above others. He marks his card as one of the elite, but the conviction he embodies it with doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Taverner never liked him. He doesn’t need her to, so long as she doesn’t like anyone else either. But she did before. She liked River. So when she came with the request to ruin him, a Shakespearean betrayal, he’d done what he had to. There was no place for him but the top of the food chain.

It’s never bothered him. There’s always someone undeserving in the place he should be. Who was the one weeping, smeared across the floor in the torture resistance training? Not him, that’s for sure.

It’s not personal. What River is or isn’t to him has never even been a consideration. It’s London Rules, as it always has been. Covering your arse is a lot easier when you can push someone down to do it for you.

When they meet again, for the first time since Spider woke from his coma, there is that stilted silence – the great unsaid. That has always been a game they played. There’d always been a hushed nature to their… relationship. Before the resentment kicked in, there was something else that was keeping them apart.

Now, even the love’s gone, but the distance remains unchanged. They’re too incompatible for that to be overcome.

Nevertheless, they are drawn together every single time.

River is the first to speak.

‘Long time, no see.’

Spider nods – a smile, half expressed, half tangled up in another moment, resting on his lips. He catches River’s insinuation. That Spider hadn’t seen him, even though he’d visited.

‘You gonna use that against me? The coma?’

‘Well, I’ve never been in one.’

The pair laugh, acidicly.

‘Never too late to try something new.’

The thin veil of playfulness shatters. They both wilt, as though resigning themselves to the opposite. It is too late. It’s all too late, and too messy, and too much.

‘That’s the last time I ask your lot for a favour.’

‘Yeah, well, we’re slow horses,’ River replies, teeth grinding slightly as he forces it out, ‘what did you expect?’

‘I would’ve thought not letting people get shot while you’re running security is common practice, even among your kind.’

They both know they’re not here to speak as though they’re on the record, in some unseen competition. They want to be candid. To possibly even be vulnerable. The trouble is, someone’s got to break first. Spider had never knowingly broken in his life. Ah, but River…

‘I thought you were gonna die.’

Spider’s eyes snap up to River, quiet satisfaction setting his lips in a smile.

‘That was never on the cards.’

‘Be fucking serious, I…’ River began with the anger that only really expresses itself for Spider. Every other inconvenience he felt was par for the course, worth little more reaction than an eye roll, but Spider is the one who gets under his skin. It’s impressive, really, how instantly he can boil River’s blood. He starts again, softer. ‘It just made me think about training.’

The glint in Spider’s eyes extinguishes itself.

‘You know, they say that when you’re in a coma, you’re aware of everything around you. That wasn’t true for me.’ Spider begins the observation in a cold, guarded way. As though armouring up in the terrible event of his vulnerability.

‘I heard nothing. Saw nothing. One minute I was awake, the next minute I was awake again. Nothing in between.’ There’s a pause, as he draws breath like a gun. ‘It’s what I imagine your life’s like at Slough House.’

River looks at him, really looks. If this is a joke at his expense, it hasn’t landed. Spider’s as serious as a heart attack, his words grave.

‘And, so what? You– you feel sorry for me?’

Spider just looks away. Maybe he thought about training too. What they had been through– only for Spider to leave his legacy in blood on a marble floor. For River to still experience a living death, everyday. Maybe he considered how sitting at that desk must feel to someone with the world to give.

Or maybe not.

The blood’s up again in River’s ears. His cheeks are beet red and his jaw aches from clenching. So much has changed. So much has stayed the same. They walk a hall of broken mirrors; a corridor leading to the abstract nothing. The walk had almost ended for Spider, but he clung on. If only to throw River ahead of him.

Why does River continue the cycle? Why is he even here? A voice in the back of his head answers:

Because he’s the only one who knows what to do with the bits you break down into.

‘I haven’t missed you being such a prick.’ River is serious when he says it, but it’s an evasion. It’s pointless too. Spider can see it for the hubris it is.

‘Cartwright,’ River hates when Spider calls him by his surname. Like an old schoolmaster. It’s loaded with association, too. His grandfather, the super spy, and him, Cartwright the Younger. The disappointment. The black sheep no-one had the decency to send to slaughter. ‘They tell me Taverner’s coming down. You might wanna make yourself scarce.’

Something like vengeance flashes in River’s eyes. How sweet it feels when the upper hand begins to guide you.

‘If they’re sending her down in person, there’ll be two choices.’

He let that hang. Maybe Spider had already considered this.

Maybe not.

‘I don’t choose Slough House.’

‘Didn’t think you would.’

‘As a new expert on fates worse than death–’

‘Yes, fine.’

It irks River. That, even while lying in a hospital bed, Spider still commands the room. His confidence, misplaced though it is, is like a dagger between River’s shoulder blades. The first piece begins to come away.

‘When will you be discharged?’

‘End of the week, all being well. Few more tests.’ He’s vague, lest River mistake his condition for any sort of weakness. It was simply a matter of record keeping that he had been shot. Dodging death in a manner almost offensive, and powering ahead like he still has the world at his feet.

Only, it’s starting to settle in. What River had said. When one choice is Slough House, the other is quit the Service. There’s no route back to the Park. This isn’t the minor blip he’s pretending it is. This is as good a death as he’ll ever get.

River might feel sorry for him. Under all the resentment, there might be a tiny sliver of him that wouldn’t wish his life on anyone else. Especially Spider, for some reason.

They sit in their torturous silence. When they built their walls, they’d been too close to see that they’d hemmed each other in with them. Stuck in a hellish limbo between saying nothing and saying everything. The goodwill between them, if it ever had existed – in the liminal ‘before’ – had run dry. There remained only an itch, like a phantom feeling for something that could still exist, but never will again. River needs to be broken down, and James needs to consume him. That was the unspoken order of things. But, to admit it would be the worst betrayal. Instead they sit, in this prison of their own making, thinking of what life would look like, as if they didn’t already know.

‘I’m gonna go.’ As River turns to his coat, he finds the forgotten bouquet beneath it. Spider’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, yeah. I got you these.’ He extracts them, now more than slightly squashed, and hands them to Spider. ‘Lilies, in case you’d died.’

Receiving them now, Spider knows what he should say. He’s opened up a clear line of sight. You got me flowers, you pathetic fuck? But he can’t. Some unseen chain snags around his neck. He holds the flowers, plastic crinkling as he turns them over in his hands.

‘I wouldn’t make it that easy for you.’

River finds himself smiling, despite himself. Despite everything.

‘I’m sure.’ He throws on his coat. ‘Give Taverner my love and… erm– enjoy unemployment!’

‘Fuck you, River.’

‘Fuck you, Spider.’

And although they both wish it weren’t, the world as they’d always known it is back.

[phantom-rats]

HAL, show me James Webb pictures please :]

[Image ID:

A drawing of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, surrounded by three screens on each side of him. The screens all display different images taken by the James Webb Telescope. The background is dark, with the screens being haloed by pale blue light, and HAL’s lens having a faint red glow. 

END ID]

[mendely]

17776 au where everything is the same except nine is the james webb space telescope. cue juice immediately scrambling to rescind that "haaaa your camera is trash" comment. or maybe not. haaaa your camera is us$10b dollar trash, kiss my french ass giant beehive

[eltonjohndenver]

the ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’ River to Spiders ‘I want love’ is diabolical and ive made myself sick

[mr-mustard-man]

Friendly reminder not to shorten the James Webb Space Telescope to 'James Webb' if you call it that. I do not believe that the telescope should be given his name.

James Webb is problematic for his treatment of LGBTQ people and was part of the governments homophonic policies occurring in the 50s and 60s. NASA was allowed to have their own policies about LGBTQ+ people, however, Webb decided they were ‘indecent’ and unfit for the job based on sexuality, gender identity and gender expression alone.

So there’s that argument, but then there’s this: Sean O’Keafe unilaterally named the telescope, breaking with the tradition that names be chosen from a number of proposed names, then voted on and named only after a successful launch.

AND...

Webb represents nothing about the spectacular science of JWST, and in fact represents an entirely different era of space exploration. He was not even an astrophysicist. So what’s the correlation? How does this make sense to name the telescope after this man?

I heard about what he had done recently and the name has bothered me ever since. I'm sure NASA could think of a better name.

Apologies for the length of this but it really frustrates me as someone who is incredibly interested in space and space exploration.

[whoslaurapalmer]

laura (1944) / laura by vera caspary -- waldo and laura meet

bonus deleted scene from the movie script, with a third interpretation of their meeting --

[nomsfaultau]

I had the lightning inspiration of Dr. Blake with a live laugh love sign in her office and now kinda concocted an entire scene about it. Like actual atrocities are happing in the background and she and Webb just have this little conversation about her interior design choices. Dr. Blake: I believe it’s an admirable aspiration! They are valuable human traits are they not? And it really brings the room together. Webb, expecting like. Severed hands and anomaly heads on pikes: who ARE you!?